Convicted pimp sentenced to life in prison

November 26, 2012|By Annie Sweeney, Chicago Tribune reporter

A photo entered as evidence at Alex Campbell's federal trial shows a tattooed homage to Campbell down a woman’s back. (HANDOUT)

Alex "Cowboy" Campbell beat, raped and terrorized the young women he forced into prostitution or to work in his massage parlors, but it was the branding that gave a federal judge sentencing him Monday the most pause.

As he considered whether the convicted pimp should be locked up for life, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman recounted how Campbell forced the women to be tattooed in highly visible places — horseshoes stamped into necks or in one case with a 13-line, 60-word homage to Campbell down a woman's back.

"I think the worst thing you did to these girls, frankly, is branding them the way you did," Gettleman said before imposing a life sentence on Campbell. "They can't get rid of those tattoos. … They have a life sentence, all of them. Every time they look in the mirror. … And it's gonna hurt. Their life sentences compel a life sentence for you."

Hearing those words, a 26-year-old woman who testified a short time earlier about being forced into prostitution by Campbell quietly started crying. For most of the nearly 51/2-hour hearing, the woman, identified only as Nicole, sat stoically as Campbell declared he had been racially targeted for prosecution as a black man and dismissed her testimony as lies, all the while calling her "Trinity," a name she testified he gave her when he brought her into what he called his "family."

Campbell, who lived in Glenview and ran a spa in Mount Prospect, was convicted by a federal jury nearly a year ago of multiple counts of forced labor, harboring illegal immigrants, sex trafficking by force and extortion. Evidence at trial showed that Campbell forced four women, three from Ukraine and one from Belarus, to work for him with little or no pay from 2008 to 2010.

Prosecutors contended that Campbell recruited the women — all here illegally — to join his "family" by promising jobs in massage parlors and places to live. Once they began working for him, Campbell seized immigration papers, forced them into sex acts and withheld payment from them, prosecutors alleged.

In his rambling, two-hour remarks, Campbell, 47, repeatedly denied it all. At one point he held up two books recovered during execution of a search warrant: "The Pimp's Bible (The Sweet Science of Sin)" and an autobiography of a Chicago pimp named Iceberg Slim.

"I knew nothing about the pimp game," he declared, raising the books. "I've never even seen these books in my life."

But Gettleman said he believed the four victims, who all testified at trial about extreme beatings, rapes and other demeaning acts by Campbell. A co-defendant, Danielle John, also testified. She had previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years of probation.

Gettleman also noted how the four women were particularly vulnerable to Campbell after jobs they secured through a group called "Au Pair in America" fell through.

"This agency basically cut them loose," the judge said.

Prosecutors count about 20 women among Campbell's victims, saying he preyed on vulnerable people he could exploit. Nicole explained how Campbell approached her on a Chicago street when she was a troubled 18-year-old with no options and offered her lunch and later a job as an escort.

What followed were a branding on her neck, prostitution, rape, beatings and humiliations, including being doused with a beer for failing to pour it correctly, she told the judge.

"It's really hard to describe what he did," she said as she struggled for words. "How you have to live with the shame. I really felt for a long time this was all my fault."

The life sentence is one of few given pimps nationally, according to federal prosecutors, and comes six months after Datqunn Sawyer was sentenced in Chicago's federal court to 50 years for the trafficking of minors.

"Sentences are starting to reflect the severity of the conduct that has been used against (victims) as well as the important message that needs to be sent out so as not to further glorify people who style themselves as pimps," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur, who prosecuted the case.